Knight and Smith
by Yami no Ryu
Summary: A knight inspects his new blade. AU.
1. Knight and Smith

He tested the weight of the blade, nodding when he found it perfectly balanced. He ran over the sharpened edges with his eyes, then the hand guard, and finally tipped the blade downwards to expect the pommel. It was a fine piece of work, masterfully crafted yet plain and practical. He gripped it with both hands, feeling the edge of the grip curving up into the pommel. His upper hand rested comfortably under the unornamented hilt. The man stepped out into the open, and ran through a few warm up exercises. He smiled. The blade handled remarkably well. 

"It'll suit?" a warm, amused voice asked. He looked over at the smith, meeting blue eyes with his own brown.

"Better than the last, Daniel," he answered, smile shrinking to a comfortable grin. He slid the longsword into its scabbard. "You've outdone yourself on this beauty."

"The best for the best, Jack," Daniel said, rubbing his soot-blackened hands against his tunic. He glanced down at the streaks they left, and frowned. "Anyway, will you stay for supper? Jonas can make something approximating edible."

Jack considered, grin twitching up to a smirk. "I'd rather keep my stomach where it is, thank you. Don't you have anyone who _can_ cook around here?"

"Um," Daniel's brow scrunched as he thought. "Oh! I think I've been invited for supper at the Carters. You know—the father who's looking to marry the daughter who's in love with the Guardsman? He wants me to marry her, but so far I've been able to fend him off. The daughter cooks delicious meals, though, so I can never turn down an invitation. The father thinks that's an indication that I'm madly in love with his daughter, simply too—well, I'm too shy and too modest in turns."

Jack let out a bark of laughter. "Yeah, I remember them. They won't mind an extra mouth?"

"Doubt it," Daniel denied. "Jonas!"

"Yes, Master Daniel?" the apprentice inquired.

"Mind the forge while the knight and I sup with the Carters," Daniel ordered, and the young man nodded assent before turning away. "Shall we?"

Jack clapped Daniel on the shoulder and proclaimed, "To sup!"


	2. Commission

Daniel shielded his face as a hit from the hammer sent red-hot sparks into the air. He was fashioning a belt knife for himself, just long enough to be used for defense if necessary. On the larger forge, Jonas was beating out a horseshoe. Daniel grinned wryly; the younger man's boast of quick hands and a quicker mind had some truth to it. Ever since his last apprentice, Nyan, had returned to the village of his birth, Daniel had been hard-pressed to keep up with the demands of his own rather large community. 

Biting the inside of his lip in concentration, Daniel returned to his work, not even noticing that someone had entered the smithy until Jonas shouted his name. Daniel looked up, noting the lean, rough profile of the stranger, and wiped his brow. His hand left a streak of dark soot on his forehead.

"What can I do for you, sir?" Daniel asked once the stranger was close enough to hear over Jonas' hammering.

"I was told you were the best sword-smith in the empire," the stranger replied, brown eyes sizing him up.

"And what would you want with a sword?" Daniel inquired, examining his own blade and nodding in satisfaction. He dipped it into a trough of cold water, and the other man had to wait until the steam subsided to answer.

"My last sword broke in battle, and I need a new one," the stranger gruffly explained.

"A knight?" Daniel said in surprise. He didn't hold much by others' bragging that he was the best smith in the empire, and it had been years since someone commissioned a full-length sword from him. The last knight to grace his forge with his presence had gone by the name of Kinsey. A ceremonial knight if there ever was one, son of a noble. Daniel's conscience had not let him sell anything less than his best, but oh how he had wanted to give the man a brittle, useless sword for his condescension.

"Yes." The stranger stared at him before asking, "How much will it cost?"

"That depends on the sword," Daniel began. "The length, what ornaments you want, and so on."

The stranger nodded. "How long will it take to make a standard longsword?"

"A couple days," Daniel answered thoughtfully. "Give or take. What was the length of your last blade?"

"Roughly six and a quarter handspans," supplied the stranger.

"And who, pray tell," Daniel asked dryly after a long silence only interrupted by the sounds of the bellows and metal-on-metal, "will I be making this longsword for?"

"Me," said the stranger, one eyebrow raised. Daniel looked at him expectantly. The stranger continued, "Jack O'Neill."

"Ah."

"I don't want any ornaments on my sword," Jack ordered. "Simple and useful. Sturdy, too."

"Well, I haven't had a complaint yet," Daniel replied wryly. "I make sturdy blades. Come back in four days. It should be done by then."

The knight nodded, and strode out of the smith. Jonas paused his work long enough to say, "He didn't look much like a knight."

"They don't always wear their armour, Jonas," Daniel replied, with a hint of reproach. Jonas ducked his head, and continued working on the horseshoes.

Daniel shook his head, not quite sure what to make of his gruff customer, and set about beginning the commissioned longsword.


	3. Dress Dagger

  
"Make it pretty." 

Daniel raised an eyebrow. He repeated, just to make sure, "Pretty?"

Jack frowned, eyes challenging, and he confirmed, "Pretty."

"I thought 'functional' was your motto," Daniel teased lightly, resting against the wall of his smithy. He was taking a well-deserved break, and he smiled when the cool wind teased his sweat-soaked hair.

"My Lord said it must be pretty for the wedding banquet," Jack informed Daniel. He added, "Make sure it can hold an edge. Can't have a dagger that goes to mush in a fight."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Have I ever done less, Sir Knight?"


	4. Apples

There was an apple tree by his family's small house that Daniel loved. In the spring it would shower the ground with little white flowers, and in the summer, green bundles of apples would appear. Daniel would sit for hours among the branches, watching the skins change from green to yellow to red. In the fall, he would pluck the ripe ones before his parents saw, so he could have the crunchy, tartly sweet fruit all to himself. 

Now a grown man with a respectable smithy and a second apprentice, the apple tree he'd planted some years before was finally bearing fruit. He could see the clusters of green just beginning to grow. He patted the trunk fondly, turning when he heard the slight scuff of boots.

"Finally," his apprentice muttered.

"You don't like apples, Jonas?" Daniel questioned softly, with an amused smile.

"I like them well enough," said Jonas. "But it seems a great deal of effort to go to when you have so much work to do, and you can buy a good apple from the market."

Daniel simply shook his head at Jonas' ignorance, and the younger man shrugged and returned to the forge. Daniel looked over his apple tree once more, and then followed his apprentice back to work.


	5. Jealousy

Daniel pounded the metal angrily, his growl unheard in the clang of hammer-on-iron. He didn't know why he was so upset. Yes, Jack had slept with Kynthia—why should he care? The lady was a beauty among the nondescript peasant population. The man was a knight; he could bed whomever he wanted. It didn't—shouldn't—matter to Daniel who the man chose to warm his bed. 

Yet it did. Immensely. The smith didn't want to examine the reason too closely.

A touch at his shoulder made him jump, and he dropped the hunk of metal he was flattening into the forge. "Jonas! What was that for?"

"If you flattened that chunk of iron any more you'd be able to eat it," Jonas said, taking the hammer from Daniel's hand. "Why don't you take a break, Master Daniel?"

"I don't need a break," Daniel snapped.

"You haven't eaten since this morning," Jonas stated. "You need food."

"Who are you to tell me what to do, Apprentice?" Daniel hissed.

"A friend," the younger man replied quietly. Daniel sobered. He closed his eyes, took a calming breath, and let it out slowly.

"I'm sorry, Jonas," the smith said tiredly. "You didn't deserve that. Yes, food would be nice right about now."

"Good, because we've been invited to eat with the Carters again," Jonas informed him cheerily.

"That man is as persistent as he is stubborn," Daniel muttered, feeling a bit of his dark mood lighten. Meals with the old soldier and his bright daughter tended to do that. Despite Jacob's fixation on his marrying Samantha, Daniel found he enjoyed the debates and general conversation at Carter mealtimes. "I find we're dining with them more often than we're left to fend for ourselves."

"I think the Lady Carter wants to keep us around a while," Jonas commented with a smile, rubbing the dirt off his hands with some water and a semi-clean cloth. "Despite how well you work metals, Master, you couldn't cook a decent meal to save your life."

"To put it kindly," Daniel agreed with a wry grin. "Yes, my culinary skills are rather dismal."

"To put it kindly," Jonas parroted. They finished cleaning up, Daniel making sure that the fires to both forges were banked properly, and then they set out for the Carter household.

Daniel resolutely set aside all thoughts of Jack and his bedmate. It would do him no good to dwell on it. He would enjoy this evening with his friends, and nothing anyone did would sour it.


	6. Ruminations

Jack O'Neill yawned, pausing in the act of sharpening his sword. The tournament seemed to be dragging on forever, and sapping all his energy besides. When the yawn passed, he bent again to his work, the whetstone making a high _shing_ as it traveled down the blade. 

It was barely past sundown, the time for reveling and drinking and relaxing. Instead, Jack had holed up in his tent to tend to the hurts he'd gathered over the course of the tourney and to take care of his equipment. He had already seen to his mount, a large chestnut gelding with rippling muscles and not much sense. His second horse, a red roan mare now past her prime, was living out the rest of her days in the stables of his lord's castle.

Jack inspected the edge of his blade, as he had countless times before, and grinned. That blacksmith sure knew how to make a sword that held an edge. The man's reputation was well-earned.

Then the knight sobered. He knew what he should be doing, and it wasn't competing. His horses might be young and strong and sure, bless them, but he was certainly getting on in years. Most knights his age would be looking to settle down with a wife and children and, if they were lucky or their lord generous, a small plot of land. Jack had realized a while ago, when his old annoyance (and sometimes enemy) Lord Harold Maybourne had found himself a wench and a home, that 'settling down' wasn't quite what he wanted.

Not that he wanted to go out campaigning again, oh no. He'd had enough of warfare. But Jack had a wife, dead though she may be, and he didn't want another. Had the plague not taken her and their son, Jack would have been more than content to live out his days with them.

Since they were dead, though, Jack found himself attracted to someone quite different. For a first, that person was a man. The smith who had forged his blade, as a matter of fact. Daniel Jackson.

Daniel was something of a contradiction. He disliked violence as a rule, but readily forged the weapons to make war possible. He was literate, yet insisted he was no better than the common man.

Jack remembered one night, when he had been passing through and decided to overnight in Daniel's humble village. A fight had broken out, in the middle of the only tavern in the village, with Daniel in the middle of it. Jack had been getting another round of ale, and about to run to the blacksmith's rescue, when Daniel had drawn his belt-knife, parried the drunken thrust of one of the aggressors, and knocked him out with the pommel. Then, almost effortlessly, he had taken himself out of the fight. When Jack questioned him, he only said that he had picked up some moves when a free-lance mercenary had wintered over. Another mystery of a bundle Jack wanted solved, preferably over long, ale-filled nights.

Jack knew with certainty that Daniel's little village was where he wanted to be. He didn't know what he'd do once there; maybe establish a small farm near the smithy so Daniel and his apprentice didn't have to buy so much from the market. But he was too old to lie to himself and say he didn't want to be near Daniel.

He wondered if Daniel ever questioned why Jack was 'passing through' so often. Truth told, Jack often made long detours so he could 'pass through.' Jack found himself wishing, more and more often lately, that he could do more than just 'pass through.'

Jack dropped the whetstone into its pouch and eased his sword into its scabbard. Oh, well. Nothing he could do about it, no matter how badly he wanted it, at least not know. He had a tournament to win, and for that he needed rest. So, with a sigh, Jack fell into his bedroll, blew out his candle, and tried to fall asleep.


End file.
